For the past few years, many have become used to having virtual meetings in their homes. Spaces like kitchen tables, couches, spare bedrooms, and hammocks in the yard have all become “offices”. As you can imagine, many of these spaces aren’t well known for their acoustic qualities. Sources: Hackaday, Timberbiz
Reverb is caused by sound bouncing off hard, flat surfaces like plasterboard. These reflections are picked up by the microphone and lead to a noticeable drop in perceived sound quality.
There are generally two ways to kill reverb in a space: diffusion and absorption. Diffusion is the technique that this is going for, with thousands of faces at different angles and locations, it breaks up the harsh reflections into millions of tiny reflections. Absorption is usually accomplished with foam and other typically soft substances.
Zac who has a produced a YouTube video on the solution, happened to have a large pile of offcuts and extra material from past projects of various wood species, making it easy to make a visually interesting piece.
He used a table saw to rip them to a consistent width and a drum sander reduced them all to the same depth. Next, the long sticks were cut with a miter saw into five different lengths, leaving him with thousands of little pieces of wood. The hard part began when he had to glue several thousand pieces to a plywood backer board with CA glue. Sanding, finishing with poly, and a french cleat made the three pieces ready to hang on the wall.
Overall, the effect is stunning visually and audibly.
The video is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzCFF5D5gPw
